MVC Support and view rendering in Anvil

August 16th, 2007

Anvil is growing rapidly and keeps getting cooler everyday! It now has support for MVC architecture (models are missing right now, but will be implemented soon) and it boasts a cool new way to shuffle away some of the code in your application view to other views like partials in rails. From the example I posted in the previous post, you can now do:

app/views/application.rb 
1
2
3

anvil "Hammer" do |app|
  app.frame "Hamr", :render => 'hamr', :title => "Hamr", :maximize => true
end
app/views/frames/hamr_frame.rb 
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

# Create Menu Bar
frame.menu_bar "Main" do |menu_bar|
  menu_bar.menu "&File", :render => 'file'
  menu_bar.menu "&Edit", :render => 'edit'
  menu_bar.menu "&Search", :render => 'search'
  menu_bar.menu "&Help", :render => 'help'
end
    
frame.text_control "Editor", 
  :size => { :width => 100, :height => 200 }, 
  :style => [ :multiline, :rich, :rich2 ]

frame.create_status_bar(2)
frame.set_status_text("Hamr World!", 0)
app/views/menus/file_menu.rb 
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

item.add(:new)
item.add(:open)
item.separator
item.add(:save)
item.separator
item.add(:preview)
item.add(:print)
item.separator
item.add(:close)
item.add(:quit)
This new way makes your code much neater. Support for putting all of the code into your application.rb file is still there, but having the ability to shuffle it away is very nice. Anyway, check out the projects: anvil.rubyforge.org and hamr.rubyforge.org.
Posted by lance Tags

Anvil: The Ruby Application Framework

August 13th, 2007

Anvil just announced its conception onto rubyforge yesterday as plans are being set to organize how the new gem is going to be created. The gem is going to be a framework that wraps around the Wx::Ruby project in a way that is more concise and ruby-esk. The concepts are inspired by ruby on rails and Shoes (a project for allowing you to create little applications that act like web browsers). Here is a sample of the some of the code from the sample application called Hammer, a ruby/anvil-based text editor included in the applications folder of the repository: 
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55

anvil "Hammer" do |app|
  app.frame "Hammer", "Hammer", :maximize => true do |frame|
    
    # Create Menu Bar
    frame.menu_bar do |menu_bar|
      
      # File Menu
      menu_bar.menu "&File" do |item|
        item.add(:new)
        item.add(:open)
        item.separator
        item.add(:save)
        item.separator
        item.add(:preview)
        item.add(:print)
        item.separator
        item.add(:close)
        item.add(:quit)
      end
      
      # Edit Menu
      menu_bar.menu "&Edit" do |item|
        item.add(:undo)
        item.add(:redo)
        item.separator
        item.add(:cut)
        item.add(:copy)
        item.add(:paste)
        item.add(:delete)
        item.separator
        item.add(:selectall)
        item.separator
        item.add(:preferences)
      end
      
      # Search Menu
      menu_bar.menu "&Search" do |item|
        item.add(:find)
        item.add(:replace)
      end
      
      # Help Menu
      menu_bar.menu "&Help" do |item|
        item.add(:about)
      end
    end
    
    frame.text_control :size => { :width => 100, :height => 200 }
    
    frame.create_status_bar(2)
    frame.set_status_text("Hammer World!", 0)
    
  end
  
end
The project is in need of talented and eager individuals to help it get off of its feet. If you are interested in contributing, check it out!
Posted by lance Tags